Believing in God - Challenge (page 10)

Elephant

My original intent was to engage King Solomon in a debate.

...oh, i see...

jgnat

still thinking: too much god can be bad for you

frankiespeakin: four gods in one, and Satan should be included to balance the whole thing

You are absolutely right, still thinking. We've met them, haven't we, at the Kingdom Hall and elsewhere. Their eyes gazing slightly upward, prone to fasting, poverty, and jugementalism. They wear the cloak of humility but secretly "know" they are above those lesser. Can't talk sports or the weather around them without God getting in the conversation. Of them I think of:

His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it. Matthew 19:10-12 KJV

Those who serve a cause are not those who love that cause. They are those who love the life which has to be led in order to serve it - except in the case of the very purest, and they are rare. - Simone Weil

...and here is how Simone ended up:

in 1943 she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and instructed to rest and eat well. However, she refused special treatment because of her long-standing political idealism and activism and her detachment from material things. Instead, she limited her food intake to what she believed residents of the parts of France occupied by the Germans ate. She most likely ate even less, as she refused food on most occasions. Her condition quickly deteriorated, and she was moved to a sanatorium in Ashford, Kent, England. [7]

After a lifetime of battling illness and frailty, Weil died in August 1943 from cardiac failure at the age of 34. The coroner's report said that "the deceased did kill and slay herself by refusing to eat whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed." (Wikipedia)

Frankiespeakin, you've given me much to think about. A balanced, quaternary god. The native religion believes in a world balanced on four qualities - Infancy/Independence, Childhood/Generosity, Adulthood/Mastery, Old Age/Belonging. Or Spiritual/Emotional/Mental/Physical. They also see the dark and the light forces as balanced.

jgnat

soft+gentle: You might be describing the struggle in my own mind, LOL. I know I work best when the best tool is used for the job. When rationality would win the day, I give attention to that. When I feel that intuitive tickle, I pay attention to that. Our brains are not static storage devices as once thought. It is constantly reinforcing thoughts and memories that receive attention, and repurposing circuits that are unused.

jgnat

tec: Is there benefit to believing in a God who does not exist?

Do you mind if I change your question slightly? How about "Is there benefit to believing in a God who we cannot prove exists?"

I think I have described the possible benefits. If the God we believe in is all-loving and just, then I may reach for that unattainable and be better for it. I've also talked about attention to an inner sensitivity for direction for problems that cannot be solved linearally. I also enjoy having an inner companion to converse with.

still thinking has offered a valid counter-argument. It is possible to do all these things without the concept of God.

What is required in both cases is to dig deep an have an all-encompassing, compassionate belief system that is not over-simplistic.

jgnat

New Chapter: We are talking about character here. Religion does not give a person better character, and natural selection does not give a person worse character. Humans will be humans no matter what the context.

Sometimes people break out of their origins.

Is there a way to break out of established patterns and have a new thought? Gregory Burns explores this in iconoclast. We can do it, by exposing ourselves to new perspectives, new landscapes.

Some of our innovations have fundamentally changed who we are and how we treat each other. Agriculture. Language. The printing press and universal literacy.

jgnat

Finkelstein: If we could just imagine a god appropriate for the time we live in, that being the 21 century.
...if all humanity was in complete agreement to this idealogical concept...

I suggest that we are changing God already. We now have the concept of individual faith, individual transformation. In the first Century, households were converted (that is the head of the household converted, and all under his dominion automatically did as well).

Those attempting to revive the first-Century church invariably impose modern ideals. We no longer live in that ancient context, and we can barely conceive how they lived.

We live longer, all our children survive to adulthood. Unless there is some horrific accident. Death is now an unwelcome visitor. Health is taken for granted. Children are treasures.

I predict that in the most backward of ideologies, we will see the rise of women who will force change from within. I give it twenty years. Call me on it.

Do we need complete agreement to see the rise of a softer, kinder ideologue? I don't think so. I think we will see bubbles, which will join to become pockets, which will come together to a new norm.

James Brown

I invite King Solomon and anyone else that is interested, to discuss if believing in God may be helpful. I am not restricting the discussion to the biblical God. I'm ready to look if this belief may be helpful both from a societal and from an individual point of view.

I don't know. I was born in the watchtower and have believed in God all my life. 60 years.

I don't know if I am damaged because of God or survived being damaged thru the grace of God.

It seems that many abuse God, the Catholics, the JW's and individual churches.

There have been times in my 60 years when the belief in God has enabled me to keep going on.

And there has been times in my 60 years when I look at the data, read the bible, and I get the feeling,

there is no God at all.

When things are going good for me. I have time to doubt.

When things are going bad for me, I fall back on faith to survive.

I can understand why atheist dont believe. I marvel at their mental strenght.

In the end each person has to work out his own salvation.

Which I take to mean secularly, that everybody has to live their own life.

We are not going thru this journey together. We are going thru it one at a time.

jgnat

Point 3: I think you are suggesting that pondering the metaphysical is premature (tea pots in orbit), since we still have so much left to discover on the verge of reality (rationalism).

I'm all for pushing the limits to learn all what we can from the observable. The advances in mapping brain function are amazing.

http://www.ted.com/talks/allan_jones_a_map_of_the_brain.html

http://www.brain-map.org/

I also have deep suspicion for any conclusions not tested by evidence. For instance, some traditional/homeopathic advice says avoid acidic and citrus fruits during illness. But we have study after study that shows that consumption of citrus fruits can reduce the risk of cancer.

There is also potentially harmful advice, such as the consumption of bear gall-bladder, which can put species at risk of extinction.

Rationalism by its nature is limited to arguments that can be linearally described. To dismiss anything outside that realm is to walk in a world with great, black holes in it. I am fed by what I see when I slow down enough not to catalogue everything. That is also processed by my mind, the part without language. I must not dismiss it.

jgnat

James Brown: When things are going bad for me, I fall back on faith to survive.

I can relate to that.

NewChapter

When things go bad for me, I look back on all the times I fell back on faith, and I realize I had faith in something that was not even there! And yet I still made it through (we usually do). I also recognize that oftentimes the pressure was increased because of my fear of displeasing this nonexistent god. So hard times were even harder. And I reason with myself. I made it through without a god even when I believed there was a god. My belief in a god made those times more difficult and more complex, and yet I made it. On my own strength! I did it, even when I made things harder for myself. Surely I can make it through this time when I'm not complicating the matter at hand!

So yes. I fall back on faith too, in a sense. Faith in my own abilities and strength, and my long history with myself that proves I can get things done, I can work through problems, I can be creative, sometimes I can't make things go the way I want them to, and sometimes I surpass all that I hoped for. I so much prefer the me of today. The me that is internally strong and able and does not have to reach outward for something I'm lacking. It's all in here---with me---and always was. Kind of like the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion.

Believing in God - Challenge

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